What is your favorite place to scuba dive? Well, after decades of teaching scuba diving, that’s a question I get a lot. And believe it or not, even though I’ve been diving on some of the most beautiful reefs in the world, one of my favorite dives was in a swimming pool.
It was a hot summer day, and we were conducting a Diveheart Scuba Experience program in a large outdoor community pool. We were using just a section of the pool for our adaptive scuba program while in another part of the pool a bunch of young girls were having a birthday pool party. I was working with a young lady named Erin who was born with a condition like cerebral palsy and has always been a wheelchair user. Erin is unable to hold a traditional scuba regulator in her mouth, so we use a full-face mask so that she can go underwater without fear of losing the regulator.
I was guiding Erin through the water when I noticed that the pool party girls were underwater with their goggles looking at Erin in amazement. In turn Erin was intrigued with the girls as well. After a few minutes of checking each other out, I lifted my head out of the water when the girls popped up to get air and I said, “Hey, come on over by Erin, she thinks you young ladies are mermaids.”
At that moment something magical happen. The girls submerged and swam toward Erin, and they must have been channeling mermaids because they moved through the water as if they had real mermaid tails.
As they approached, Erin reached out to them. When the girls popped up again for air, I said, “It’s OK, you can fist bump Erin.”
They hesitated at first, but then began fist bumping Erin. When I surfaced with Erin and took her full-face mask off, she looked up at her parents and said, “Mom, Dad, I saw mermaids.”
She’s been enamored with mermaids ever since. Recently a mermaid club was at the pool we were using. Erin had just finished a 40-minute dive and had just taken off her wetsuit. When she saw the mermaids that all changed. She got her wetsuit back on, grabbed a new scuba tank and spent the next 40 minutes living her dream of diving with mermaids.
I can’t wait to see the video!
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